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note: The following was archived many years ago (ca. 1974) from "Sports Illustrated" magazine.

Beware of Flat-Footed People with Garlic Breath

Despite his imperfections (odoriferous or otherwise), the NFL's worse composite physical specimen is a Hall-of-Fame candidate.

by George Plimpton and Bill Curry / Sports Illustrated magazine

This article has been adapted from One More July by George Plimpton and Bill Curry / Harper&Row.

I can't remember when we began to construct our composite of the National Football League's worst physical specimen. Last year a few miles out of Hobart, Indiana, I think. Bill Curry was at the wheel. We were driving up to Green Bay where Curry was to report to the Packers' training camp, trying to make it where 10 years before he had started his career as a center. (He didn't and now is an assistant coach at Georgia Tech.)

He had asked me along for the ride. He was worried about his knee which he had injured badly when he was with the Houston Oilers in 1973 (there was a pin through it and it bore a curved white scar). We got to talking about great athletes who had succeeded in the NFL despite physical limitations.

"Look at your old pal Alex Karras," Curry said. "The amazing thing about his great play as a Lion tackle was that he couldn't see what he was doing. Worst pair of eyes in the NFL. He got to the quarterback by the touch system."

"He refused to wear contact lenses," I recalled. "He tried them once and didn't like what he saw out there on the playing field. He told me that he had come off the field with the defensive unit and sat down on the bench next to Bill Swain, the linebacker, who it turned out had just lost his contact lenses. They joked about it. 'Hey! Do you think we're facing in the right direction?' Karras said."

Curry laughed. "Yes, you'd have to give Karras the vote for the worst eyes."

I told Curry that Karras had once told me who had the worst breath in the NFL.

"What?"

"The worst breath. It belonged to an Italian who played in the line for Los Angeles -- Joe Scibelli. Karras said that in his first few NFL seasons, Scibelli used to eat something awful on purpose before games and relied very heavily on his bad breath until, of course, he developed into a great player. Then he didn't have to breathe on people that much.

"Well, I tell you who had the worst feet," Curry said. The worst feet I ever saw in my life belonged to Bubba Smith. They're about 23 inches long and sort of cone-shaped. Remember those pointy-toe shoes that people wore years ago? Well, Bubba's feet were made for those. They'd just slide right in there. He had yellow toenails that crumple under and they're all wrinkled and just horrid looking. Both feet are perfectly flat; he has no arch whatsoever. He just stands flat down on the floor."

We drove for a while until the steady consideration of Bubba Smith's feet got to me and I said: "Let's move on up the body. Who had the worst calves?"

Curry said: "Well, the worst calves I ever saw -- and you'll remember I only speak from experience with 4 NFL teams (Baltimore, Green Bay, Houston, and Los Angeles) -- belonged to Rick Volk who played safety for the Colts when I was with them. It was obvious from the day he got to the Colts that somebody had 'rustled his calves'."

I made an appropriate snort of dismay. Curry apologized and continued about Volk.

"He had a powerfully-built upper body … with a face straight out of the Vienna Choir Boys. You'd expect to see him with one of those little candle-snuffers that acolytes carry. But he's never had any calves! We got on him about it. The only thing he could counter with was 'Have you ever seen a thoroughbred with big calves?' That was the best he could do."

"What about knees?" I asked.

I remembered Gil Mains, a Detroit Lions tackle I'd known who had been hurt in a game against San Francisco and whose knee looked as though a pillow had been sewn into it.

"Billy Ray Smith of the Colts had one of the really bad knees," Curry was saying. "He tore it all to pieces early in his career with Pittsburgh. Buddy Parker -- the coach of the Steelers -- accused him of being chicken. So he went ahead and played on it. It is so bad that his scar stretches from the top of his thigh across his knee and down around his calf where the ligaments were rebuilt with tissue removed from the outside part of his leg. He was told that not only would he never play again but that also he'd be fortunate if he walked again. He went on to play 11 more years in the National Football League after that.

"But I guess Taz Anderson -- who played tight end for St. Louis and Atlanta -- really had the worst knees in captivity. He had 10 knee operations. They had taken so much out that the last time they went in, they actually found a metal clamp that somebody had left. One of the doctors along the way."

"It isn't easy to talk about knees," I said.

Curry shrugged. "The pain is always there. But it's not gruesome and it doesn't keep you from functioning," he said, thinking of his own damaged knee.

"What about thighs?" I asked to change the subject.

Curry shifted in his seat.

"This is painful," he said. "I've probably got the worst thighs of any NFL player. People meet me: 'This is Bill Curry. He played center for the Baltimore Colts.' They're impressed. But if I happen to have on shorts and they look at my legs, they get this real suspicious look. I just don't have big thighs. Never have."

"Do you know the Ronald Searle caricatures?" I asked. "The long thin legs and tank-like bodies on top?"

"I hadn't thought of myself quite that way."

"What about hips?" I asked.

"Worst hips go to Don Shinnick," Curry said. "Shinnick did not have any hips. Do you know about him?"

"No," I admitted.

"He played linebacker with us on the Colts. He's practically a composite in himself. Shinnick had the worst body in the history of the World. His lower stomach protruded. His chest had fallen early in life. His shoulders sloped down to hair arms that reached below his knees. He not only has this bad body but heck! he has a bad mind. As witness that he's now a defensive coach for the Oakland Raiders! But Shinnick did things like …

"One day, Gale Sayers of the Bears broke clear and was running for a touchdown while Shinnick was in his normal position -- sitting on his rear. He was looking downfield like a man on a beach staring out to sea. In the films you could see him. He raised his right hand very carefully and with his forefinger he fired at Sayers all the way down the field like this -- Bang! Bang! Bang! That actually happened. The coaches ran the film over-and-over unbelieving. Shinnick missed, though. Sayers went in for the touchdown.

"Another thing that happened … The year before I joined the Colts, Shinnick was in a game against the Atlanta Falcons. On this one particular play, there was a turnover -- a fumble or something -- and the Falcons got the ball. They called a sweep and immediately ran for about 10-or-15 yards. Shinnick was on the sidelines jumping up-and-down and screaming: 'Come on, let's go! Let's go! What's wrong? Let's go! Let's pick it up out there! Don't let 'em run like that!' Somebody finally said: "Shinnick, they just ran around your side. You're supposed to be in the game! We're playing a man short.' "

Curry gave me a look.

"The thing about Shinnick stories," he said, "is that you're better off telling lies about him because nobody believes the truth. Listen to this one. In 1968 we were in Yankee Stadium against the Giants. Shinnick had pulled a hamstring muscle. Which was understandable because it was the only muscle in that body of his. But he had been healing for about 4 weeks and Don Shula wanted to give him a little playing time so that he'd be ready for the playoffs. We were beating the Giants pretty bad. Shinnick didn't know he was going to be put in the game. Without about 4 minutes left to play, Shula looked down the bench and called out: 'Shinnick! Shinnick, get ready!' "

"Well, Shinnick was standing there having undone the belt buckle on his football pants and put the belt through his headgear -- behind the bar of his face mask -- and then buckled it back together so that he wouldn't have to hold the headgear. It was hanging there in front of him off his belt. He had a warmup jacket on and was eating a sandwich, standing there in the Sun enjoying the game.

"When Shula began to yell, he stripped off his jacket. As he ran onto the field, he was trying to get his helmet off the belt without dropping his pants in front of 63,000 people. When he got to the line, the Giants were just breaking the huddle. He got the defensive assignment from the middle linebacker. As he lined up in front of the tight end, he discovered to his horror that he was still holding the sandwich in his hand. He turned and handed it to the defensive end Roy Hilton. Roy turned next door and stuck it in Freddy Miller's hand.

"Why Freddy didn't just throw it to the ground, I don't know. But with one hand down in his stance, he reached out with the other to try to hand the sandwich to the referee. The ref stood there, you know, with his mouth hanging open. The play began and I don't remember what happened after that. Maybe Freddy ate it."

"How good a player was Shinnick?" I asked. I didn't understand how anyone like that could survive in the NFL.

"It was crazy," Curry said. "But Shinnick was usually among the leaders in interceptions. Mostly because he was in the wrong place at the right time. A quarterback would read the defense perfectly … set up to throw where there had to be an open man … and there -- as if a 12th player had materialized -- would be the grotesque figure of Shinnick. He gambled and he improvised. But it paid off."

"What about stomachs," I asked. "Whose stomach would we have?"

"Stomachs …" Curry reflected. "Highly competitive area here. Though when I came in the league in 1965, it was fashionable to have a flat stomach. Vince Lombardi once said that he'd never seen a mean fat guy and he certainly wouldn't tolerate any fat people on his team. On the Packers, Ron Kostelnik had a tendency to balloon up. And so did a guard named Dan Grimm. Before weigh-ins (they'd get fined if they were overweight), they wouldn't eat for 2 days and they'd step up on the scales, these troubled men with their eyes deep back in their heads. Afterward, they'd sprint for their lockers where they'd wolf down a couple of apples they'd hidden back there. Just lean back and drop them down their throats like pills.

"Their fat problem possessed them like people in love. And they were always tinkering with ways to solve it. John Mackey of the Colts -- who also tended to balloon -- used to scout scales beforehand. He'd find that if stood on the left-hand corner, he'd weigh a third- of a pound less. And then he'd get a teammate to stand alongside him on the opposite side of the coach who was weighing him in. Just at the right moment, this guy would lift Mackey up with a finger under his elbow -- they rehearsed all this beforehand, doing it very quickly and subtly -- and the scale would read 220. If John Sandusky (who was the coach handling the weigh-in) was in a good mood, he'd say 'Okay, Mackey. 220' But if Sandusky was testy that day, he'd make Mackey stand in the middle of the scale and move everyone back. John would weigh 222 and he'd pay a fine."

"The largest football player I ever saw was Roger Brown of the Lions," I said. "300 pounds. After practice, the coaches would send him out to run off the fat. He wore leather-like sweatsuits and run through the sprinkler systems set on the practice fields to keep cool. You could hear the wet suit slapping against his skin."

"Damn, I never saw him fat," Curry said. "Actually, you don't look across the line and see fat peop.e Brown's weight was concentrated in those enormous thighs of his. Tree trunks! The first time I ever saw him, I came up on the ball from our huddle and looked to the right and left. All I could see was Brown. He filled my field of vision. Once again, I wondered if I was really suited for this business."

I said that Brown had once told me the nicest part of football was a bath with Epsom salts that his wife prepared for him after a game. He would ease himself into it and groan with pleasure. I had always imagined -- because he was so big -- that all that was required was a couple of pails of water in the bottom of the tub. It would blow around him up to his chin when he squeezed himself in.

Curry suddenly <snapped> his fingers.

"I know who had a huge stomach. John Williams! He used to be with the Colts but now he's with the Rams. It bellied WAY out! Oh yes! Big protruding abdomen. But actually, he an excuse for it. He said it was due to a congenital defect which he had in his back. The coaches would look at him and shake their heads. He'd say 'Coach, I'm not overweight. I'm just swaybacked!' "

Curry laughed. "Great football player. But a very odd body."

"What about the chest?" I asked. "That's next."

"Shinnick again," Curry said. "He didn't have a chest. He had a breastbone but no chest. He didn't have a neck either. We called him 'No-Neck'. So he takes care of the entire upper torso of our composite."

"What about a football mind?" I asked. "Who was splendidly deficient in that department?"

Curry thought for a while.

"Well, Allen Jacobs -- bless his heart -- had great football ability but not much football sense. He ended being traded from Green Bay to the New York Giants. he was a fullback and very strong, built like Jimmy Taylor. Just a real powerful kid. But he kept running into his own people and smashing them around.